


inherently feral

by elumish



Series: Werewolves 101 [23]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolves Are Known, Gen, Take Your Fandom to Work Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 09:58:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6978703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Most legacy kids go to regular public school and don’t spout any anti-werewolf rhetoric in public. We’re taught not to socialize with werewolves, not to befriend them”—and how well she had done with that—“but going after them is suspicious, and even a lot of people in the HFU find killing kids…uncomfortable.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	inherently feral

**Author's Note:**

> This might be super technical (sorry), but it's the only way I could think of putting someone where I work. Also, for those of you who want to see a bit more detail about the HFU, tada.

Allison isn’t sure whether to be impressed or underwhelmed by the security system. On one hand, the place apparently doesn’t work with anything classified, and they don’t seem to be doing anything that would need hardcore protection, but on the other hand, having a security system with the giant gaping flaw that they’ll let anyone in without checking identification or screening them almost seems to make the security system useless.

There’s nobody at the front desk on the second floor where she was told to go, so she’s swiped into the office by a kid who looks like he’s eighteen at the oldest with earbuds in his ears, who immediately disappears around a corner. The office seems to branch off in both directions just past the unmanned front desk, and she’s pretty sure given the attempt at security that she’s not just supposed to wander around, so she just takes a seat in one of the chairs and pulls out her phone.

A couple minutes—and six Instagram clips of Isaac surrounded by scarves—later, a woman walks up to her. “Allison Agazzi?”

Allison looks up, then stands, offering her hand. “You must be Dr. Jimenez.”

“Maria.” Maria looks at the desk. “Have you signed in?” Allison shakes her head. “Okay. You need to sign in and put me down as the person you’re here to meet, and then we can head to my office to talk.”

Allison scrawls her information down on the paper, and then the two of them head down the left fork, which opens up in a few offices and a hell of a lot of computers with what look like college students sitting in front of them. “The average age here seems pretty young.”

Maria looks around. “They’re mostly interns. It’s one of our big programs here; we have between eighty and a hundred interns a semester and for the summer.” Allison whistles. “They’re not all on the same project, though. Most projects only have a couple, other than a really big one.” Maria gestures to a door off to the side. “My office. I was lucky; when we expanded up to the third floor six months ago or so, I ended up with my own office.”

The room is small and made to feel even smaller by the mountain of papers and books and other stuff on the desk and the bookshelf crammed in the corner, but the window behind Maria is large enough to make it a little less claustrophobic. Once they’re seated with the door closed behind Allison—and that’s uncomfortable as hell, having her back to so many people—Maria says, “You said when we were emailing that you live in California. I hope you didn’t come all the way out to Maryland just for this.”

Allison shakes her head. “There’s an archery competition in Virginia over the weekend that I’m competing in. And the boyfriend of a close friend of mine has a sister who works on Capitol Hill who they’re visiting, so the three of us came out together.”

“That’s good.” Maria turns to log in to computer on one of the monitors next to her, then looks back at Allison. “As you know from our email conversation that we’re working on a simulation of radicalization to domestic terrorism, and specifically anti-werewolf terrorism, for the NCTC—the National Counterterrorism Center. While part of the simulation—namely the post-radicalization pre- and post-attack part—is being handled on our end, we’re hoping for you to set up a framework for radicalization to an anti-werewolf organization. Namely, the HFU. Do you have any questions about that?”

“In your email you talked about me writing biographies and incident reports. I understood the biography part, but I wasn’t clear on what you meant by incident reports.”

Maria nods, pulling out a stack of at least thirty paper held together by a binder clip. “This is a radicalization simulation developed for one of our classes by a couple of our interns a few semesters ago; you can see examples in here. In essence, the idea is that pieces of information have been submitted or seen by law enforcement, and they need to decide what is worth investigating further. The ultimate goal is different between the old simulation and this one, but the idea is the same. In both simulations, the incident reports show possible examples of radicalization—threatening posts on Facebook, overheard conversations—and have two possible outcomes—the one where the person or people were radicalized or are being radicalized, and the one where they aren’t. Does that make sense?”

“So far, yes.”

“Great. My hope is also for you to check at various stages to see how realistic the rest of the simulation is.”

Allison nods. “You mentioned an attack. I don’t know how much planning you’ve done so far, but I would suggest not using a centrally planned attack, especially if this is supposed to represent the HFU going forward. At the moment, the HFU’s central leadership is…complicated, and without a clear new leader having emerged, it’s hard to tell what the orders will be going forward.”

Maria takes a note of that. “Thank you. Additionally what I was hoping, while I have you here, is that you could talk me through the radicalization process. Who the organization targets, what rhetoric is used, anything like that that you can tell me.”

It takes Allison a second, because even now she has to work through that kneejerk reaction that this isn’t something that you talk about, and then she nods. “Of course. The first thing to keep in mind is that there’s actually two sets of people who are in the HFU. You’re talking about the radicalization process as though the HFU goes after people to get them to join, and to some degree that’s true, but around sixty percent of the HFU is legacy—their parents or whoever raised them is or was in it. We—they—start young. The ideology—werewolves are inherently feral, it doesn’t matter if they’re rogue because they’re all a danger, werewolves aren’t human—starts basically as soon as the kid is old enough to understand words, though that’s as much a product of the household as it is any sort of deliberate attempt to convince the kid. Martial arts training starts between four and six, and hunting training starts at around thirteen.

“Most legacy kids go to regular public school and don’t spout any anti-werewolf rhetoric in public. We’re taught not to socialize with werewolves, not to befriend them”—and how well she had done with that—“but going after them is suspicious, and even a lot of people in the HFU find killing kids…uncomfortable.” She rubs a hand across her mouth, finds that it’s shaking, and drops it back down in her lap. If Maria notices, she doesn’t say anything. “The ones that they try to recruit, those are usually the ones that are more obviously anti-werewolf. Humans first people. This almost never starts before high school, and a lot of it’s college; if there’s not going to be anyone at home to cement these ideas, they want them to be already set. For the most part, these are going to be the ones that go on Facebook or Twitter or wherever else and rant about how werewolves are animals and any human who has sex with them is committing bestiality and betraying their blood, things like that.”

Maria looks up from what she’s writing down, asking, “From what I understand, one problem with identifying people who are at risk is that they tend not to fit a lot of models; the HFU is racially diverse and has a fairly high proportion of women who act as more than just wives for the men.”

Allison smiles a little, even though it’s really not funny. “Gerard Argent always used to say that the hatred of werewolves could bring anyone together. The HFU doesn’t give a damn what you look like as long as you want to kill werewolves and are willing to pull the trigger. In terms of women—they don’t recruit women. Women are traditionally trained as leaders, and we’re all legacy. It’s not that men are seen as cannon fodder, or that women don’t fight, but the purpose of a woman in their eyes is to lead and the purpose of a man is to kill.”

“Gerard Argent was in charge of the HFU for over a decade before his death, though.”

“Traditionally, the Argents have been in charge of the HFU. What you need to understand is that, while the HFU has—or had—a fairly strong central leadership, most regional groups operate relatively autonomously. I mean, if Gerard—or whoever’s in charge—gives an order, they would do it with no question, but beyond general directives regional groups are generally expected to do whatever works for them to kill werewolves. Those regional groups are usually a family or a set of families, sometimes with recruited members operating with them, with the matriarch of the region giving the orders. Kate Argent was about a year from taking over from Gerard—who was essentially acting as a regent—when she set the Hale fire. The next Argent woman was married in, so she could be in charge regionally but not of the entire operation, and when she died the last female Argent was still too young.”

Maria looks at her.

“Me.” Allison shrugs a shoulder awkwardly, wishing she had something to do with her hands. “I was to take charge once I was initiated, but I defected before then.” She shrugs again. “Anyway, in terms of who they’re going to go after, they’re not going to try to recruit already-established Hunters or, for the most part, people who grew up around a pack. Hunters know the difference between rogues and regular werewolves, so none of the ‘they’re all the same’ rhetoric really works, and people who grew up around a pack know that regular werewolves are stable. More or less. It’ll be mostly people who either lost someone because of a rogue—especially if they lost a parent—or people who only know about werewolves because of the news.

“While you want to look at people who do martial arts, the big thing you want to look at is long-range fighting. People who spend a lot of time at gun ranges, people who do a lot of archery. It’s a lot safer and easier to kill a werewolf from far away.”

Maria finishes writing down her notes, then looks up at Allison. “This has been a lot of help. While you’re here, the payroll people have some information to give you about how and when the stipend will be given to you, so I can show you to their office. And timeline-wise, if it works for you, we’ll plan on you sending a rough draft of the incident reports by next Friday. They aren’t necessary for the vast majority of our work, so we’ll be working simultaneously.”

“Great.” They both stand, and Allison offers Maria her hand. “I hope this helps.”

Maria nods. “We all do.” She looks past Allison, presumably through the window on her door that looks out to the mess of college students. “It’s one of the only jobs where our main goal is to become unnecessary.”


End file.
